I would mention with pleasure the services of Company L in delaying the approach of the enemy, as well as in killing and wounding several of their officers and men in their approach on the place.

GEO. W. TRAFTON,

Lieutenant-Colonel, Commanding Regiment.

Colonel EDWARD HATCH,

Commanding Brigade.

No. 4.

Report of Brig. General James R. Chalmers, C. S. Army.

HEADQUARTERS CAVALRY IN NORTH MISSISSIPPI, Oxford, November 16, 1863.

COLONEL: On October 26, I received a telegram from General Johnston notifying me that Sherman was moving east, and ordering me to harass his rear and break the railroad behind him. I replied by telegraph, that the road could by most seriously injured between La Grange and Corinth, but that the enemy could concentrate there more troops and faster than I could, and suggested that I could make a demonstration on Germantown or Collierville, which would draw the enemy's cavalry from the road between La Grange and Corinth, and that I would order Colonel Richardson with his brigade to watch his opportunity and tear up the road as soon as it was vacated. Major-General Gholson, of the Mississippi Militia, was requested by me to co-operate with Colonel Richardson, and very promptly agreed to do so. My ammunition had not been replenished since my last forward movement, and the waters of the Tallahatchie were then up so high that I was compelled to build two floating bridges to cross it. This prevented me from moving earlier, but on the morning of November 1 my whole command was put in motion. Colonel Slemons' brigade encamped that night at Looxahoma, McCulloch at Ingram's Mill, and Richardson at Cherry Creek.

On the night of the 2nd, I concentrated Slemons' and McCulloch's commands at Anderson's house, between the fork of Pigeon Roost and Coldwater, 16 miles from Germantown and 19 form Collierville, threatening both places. Major Mitchell, with two companies of the Eighteenth Mississippi Battalion, had been sent forward on the evening before, and drove in the enemy's pickets at Quinn's Mill, expecting that they would cross Coldwater in force the next day after him, and we were in a good position to cut them off had they attempted it, but they did not. Before leaving camp I had ordered Captain Henderson to keep scouts in Holly Springs and Hernando, and also on the railroad and State line road, with instructions to report instantly any movement of troops, and to cut the telegraph wires.

The scouts from near Germantown and Collierville reported on the night of the 2nd that the enemy was evacuating the railroad; that the infantry had all been taken away, and that there was only one regiment of cavalry at Germantown and one at Collierville [the Sixth and Seventh Illinois Cavalry]. Supposing that the scouts were on the State line road as ordered, and having heard nothing from them of any movement of troops from Memphis or La Grange, and feeling able to encounter, even behind entrenchments the two regi-